Yes, I often talk to the relevant team member (mostly the people who are in touch with customers) from the day 1 to get real-life use cases and example data. It is like a requirement to kick off designs.

Figma would certainly help, only for some who has at least basic knowledge about design though since editing directly in the source file by someone who doesn't know what he is doing can cause problems.

ah I hear you. I passed that on to developers though :D I ask copyrighters to contact developers to update in the code as it takes less time for them, plus when they give me to update the designs, all I actually do is passing the same copy on to developers, so I'm not really needed in there :D